ARF
Problems
Court Papers

The
Official Language of Literacy

RickErickson, TomCloer, AliceRandlett

State and national educational
institutions publish official bulletins, catalogs, and documents that contain
everything from broad mission statements to specific learning goals for
students. At the 1998 ARF meeting one of the problem court sessions featured a
panel of literacy professionals who shared their views of different official
educational documents. This article contains papers from three panelists. The
first two authors critique state literacy learning objectives and the third
decries the use of marketing metaphors to frame educational standards.

RickErickson’s Benchmark Board Game

Illinois has developed
an official set of educational standards that students are to meet to progress
through grades K-12. Statewide benchmarks for all students are the core of
widespread “quality assurance” efforts for holding schools and teachers
accountable for student achievement. Illinois is apparently
good at writing benchmarks. Ogle (1998) reported that the Illinois standards were
rated in the top four in the nation and were the only ones receiving an “A”
rating in an Education Week survey.
In addition to official standards, Illinois is developing
state tests that will be used to make decisions about promotion, remediation,
summer school, and retention for Illinois elementary
students. However, the benchmarks and the tests are not yet aligned. Ogle
(1998) reported that EuniceGreer, the Illinois
State Board of Education (ISBE) director of standards and assessment, hopes to
have a system aligned in five years.

In the immediate future, it
will be interesting to see how the use of mandated and fixed benchmarks with
accompanying tests works out. One belief is that accountability is unattainable
because statewide benchmarks ignore the real world of variance and uncertainty
that exists in every classroom. To paraphrase Shrag (1998), the longest
distance in the world is between a curriculum policy paper and what goes on in
a child’s mind. However, this pessimistic view is not the norm, and a
significant segment of Illinois school folks are taking the benchmarks seriously. Local districts are
keying the 185 benchmarks to specific teaching activities. One Illinois regional office of education has created a
web site (http://www.stclair.k12.il.us/makethelink/) with a matrix of the
benchmarks and teaching activities.

While the school improvement movement at
the state board level seeks to bolster accountability with benchmarks and
matching test items, Illinois educators at
the local level are concerned. Both teachers and principals say the ISBE
benchmarks need to be restated in terms that students, teachers, and parents
understand. Concerns about the jargon of benchmarks spurred me to develop a
reading task that attempted to test the clarity of the benchmarks. Below is the
plan I developed.

I drew a sample of 33 of the 185 Language
Arts benchmarks, numbered them 1-33 and assembled decks of 3x5 cards. Each card
had one benchmark printed on one side. I made a matrix with empty cells for the
33 cards and asked teachers and supervisors to sort the cards and write the
number of the benchmark in a cell to see if they could assign a benchmark to a
place on the matrix that corresponded to three criteria: (1) Goal area
(reading, reading literature, writing, listening/speaking, application); (2)
sub-goal area (for example under reading are three sub areas: word
analysis/vocabulary, reading strategies, comprehension); and (3) level
(Illinois benchmarks are placed at five levels--early and late elementary,
middle school, and early and late high school). The directions for the sorting
task told the respondents to sort the 33 cards into five piles with 8 cards for
Goal One, 5 for Goal Two, 7 for Goal Three, 5 for Goal Four, and 8 for Goal
Five. Then they were directed to sort each pile into the sub-categories under
each goal area. Finally, they were to sort the sub-category cards according to
the state specified sequence from early elementary through late high school and
write the number of the card in an empty cell on the board game.

Board Game
Results

In Fall 1998, 30 teachers enrolled in two
of my graduate reading courses sorted the 33 benchmarks across all five goal
areas with 58% accuracy for goal area, 44% accuracy for sub goal, 33% accuracy
for school level. A break down of sorting accuracy by goal and sub goal is as
follows. Eight learning to read benchmarks were sorted with 53% accuracy for
goal area. For sub-goal sorting, 3 word analysis and vocabulary benchmarks were
sorted with 61% accuracy, 2 reading strategies benchmarks were sorted with 25%
accuracy, and 3 comprehension benchmarks were sorted with 27% accuracy. Five
reading literature benchmarks were sorted with 61% accuracy for goal area. For
sub-goal sorting, 3 literary element benchmarks were sorted with 51% accuracy,
and 2 read and interpret benchmarks were sorted with 37% accuracy. Eight write
to communicate benchmarks were sorted with 61 % accuracy for goal area. For
sub-goal sorting, 2 spelling/grammar benchmarks and 3 composition benchmarks
were both sorted with 58% accuracy. Two writing benchmarks were sorted with 38%
accuracy. Five listening and speaking benchmarks were sorted with 74% accuracy
for goal area. For sub-goal sorting, the 2 listening benchmarks and the 3
speaking benchmarks were sorted with 62 and 71% accuracy, respectively. Eight
benchmarks for the goal area of apply and use language arts were sorted with
52% accuracy. Three sub-goals for locate, the 2 for analyze, and the 3
sub-goals for using information were sorted with 44, 44, and 30% accuracy,
respectively.

The benchmark, “Locate information using a
variety of resources,” was easily sorted with 100% accuracy for both goal area
(apply and use) and sub-goal (locate information). Another easy benchmark was,
“Apply listening skills as individuals and members of a group in a variety of
settings [lectures, discussions, presentations].” It was sorted with 93%
accuracy for goal (listening/speaking) and 73% accuracy for sub-goal area
(listening). Likewise the benchmark, “Present brief oral reports, using
language and vocabulary appropriate to the message and audience [show and
tell],” was sorted with 87% accuracy for both goal and sub-goal area
(speaking).

Other benchmarks were very hard to sort.
For example, “Respond to literary material by making inferences, drawing
conclusions and comparing it to their own experience, prior knowledge and other
texts,” was only sorted with 13% accuracy for goal area (reading literature)
and 7% accuracy for sub-goal (read and interpret). The benchmark, “Plan,
compose, edit and revise documents that synthesize new meaning gleaned from
multiple sources,” was sorted with 7% accuracy for goal area (apply and use
language arts) and zero % for sub-goal area (use information).

Possible explanations

The most easily sorted benchmarks
contained words that provided clear clues to which goal areas and sub goal
areas they were from. The first easy benchmark said “locate information” which
matches the sub goal descriptor word for word. The next two easy benchmarks
contain the words “listening” and “oral” and are from listening and speaking
goal areas that had no separate sub-goal categories.

The hardest benchmarks to sort were from
goal areas and sub goal areas “read and interpret literature” and “comprehend
and use information.” The hard-to-sort benchmark from the state matrix for the
read and interpret sub goal was most often assigned to the comprehension sub
goal. Another hard-to-sort benchmark from the state matrix for the sub category
using information was often sorted as a writing task. The sub goal areas
related to comprehension, interpretation and application of language arts
appear to have the greatest overlap and redundancy.

How Many
Benchmarks?

With all due respect for the need to have
a comprehensive set of learning standards the volume of Illinois benchmarks is
consistent with the finding that American schools have the most content
requirements of any industrialized nation of the world (Daggett, 1994).
Furthermore, a breakdown of the benchmarks reveals that the “go to school”
nature of the American curriculum is alive and well in Illinois. There are 59
benchmarks for Goal One: Reading With Understanding; 32 for Goal Two: Reading
Literature; 27 for Goal Three: Writing to Communicate; 35 for Goal Four:
Listening and Speaking; and 32 for Goal Five: Apply and Use Language Arts.

About two-thirds of the benchmarks (118 or 64%)
are for reading and writing and apply largely to school reading and writing
achievement that prepares students to be successful in the next grade, on the
next test, and at the next level of education. Only one-third of the benchmarks
focus on the major language processes used outside of school where, at work and
as citizens in a democracy, we read, write, speak, and listen in the home, the
workplace, or society in general.

Perhaps the suspected overlap, redundancy,
and jargon that made it hard for teachers to sort the benchmarks could be
reduced by combining goal areas. For example, reading literature might be
placed with either learning to read or with applying and using language arts.
If the latter were attempted, there could be one application goal area and sub
areas of literature and research.

Clarity of
Benchmarks

It is true that taking the benchmarks out
of the context of the original matrix made this sorting game difficult. When
the benchmarks are read in the total scope and sequence of categories, it is
possible to see how they are intended to mark progress across time.
Nevertheless, the game provides a way to check on the clarity and meaning of
benchmarks as individual items. From this perspective one could conclude that
the Listening and Speaking benchmarks, with a 74% accuracy level, were easier
to sort than the others. Likewise, the Reading Literature benchmarks, with a
48% accuracy level, were the most difficult. In terms of clarity, the
benchmarks with the lowest sub goal scores could indicate areas of overlap and
confusion. This conclusion bears consideration when it is revealed that the
four lowest sub goal scores are for very important items that are supposed to
mark progress in reading strategies, comprehension, read and interpret, and
using information.

That benchmarks are not clear to teachers
is ironic when one reads the introductory notes in the Illinois Learning Standards. According to State Board of Education
officials, the standards and benchmarks were developed to: “be specific enough
to be used in assessing progress and improving students learning (p. vi)” and,
“the standards clearly define the learning needed to reach that goal. They
represent the results of schooling and thus may be considered exit standards”
(ISBE, 1997, p. vii). This is clearly heavy-duty accountability language. It’s
no wonder teachers and principals are concerned when unclear and overlapping
benchmarks are being used to police students and hold teachers accountable.
Perhaps like vague laws that are ruled unconstitutional, vague benchmarks
should be ruled uneducational.

Finally, even though Illinois earned a grade
of“A” for its learning standards, the
results of the benchmark board game speak to problems that accompany attempts
to deconstruct literacy and express it in legalized levels of pinpointed
achievement. The Illinois benchmarks map
the literacy puzzle in great detail. However, when the puzzle pieces were
disrupted, a group of Illinois teachers had
limited success putting the them back together, suggesting that these literacy
benchmarks need some literary reworking and we have a ways to go before we
claim to have a genetic map of literacy benchmarks that teachers understand.

St. Clair County Regional Office of Education.
(1999) Make the link web site.
(http://www.stclair.k12.il.us/makethelink/)

Thomas Cloer, Jr.’s A Step Down from Sterling Standards to Vapid Vignettes

The state document titled South Carolina English Language Arts
Framework (1996), or SCELAF, is similar to the national Standards for the English Language Arts
(1996). Both are theoretically and professionally well-developed seminal
documents that reveal oceans of differences between theory and practice in
literacy development. We fly all over the galaxy with the most laudable,
ingratiating standards before landing in a dung heap when showing how these
become practice in the classroom vignettes.

This is not
new. There has always been this gargantuan abyss between theory and practice.
We simply haven't heretofore been forced to adhere to such artificial
specificity as of late. We could write, research, and even teach theory without
ever really being forced to follow through with concrete, explicit, unambiguous
models of pedagogy developed from theory. But South
Carolina has gone even further than the International
Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. South
Carolina also includes assessment with standards and, of
course, the ubiquitous vignettes.

A framework,
according to the South Carolina document is
like a poem, a diamante.

It is a pattern, a format, a design to be
completed by the schools and teachers in South
Carolina who will use it as a starting point. Like a
poem written by a child, it should be taken by each school or school district
in the state and fashioned into a finished form appropriate to the needs of the
local students and the community. (South Carolina English Language Arts
Framework, 1996, p.4)

We have heard
that echo, haven't we, every time a new standard has appeared anywhere. The
standard will be a veritable slinky and will shift, step, roll, and slide to
any beat in any community, anywhere, anytime.

One of the most
interesting phenomena of recent times is the fixation on developing knowledge
bases. Everything now instead of simply being titled a review of research must
have a well-developed knowledge base. So, the first statement about South
Carolina's Frameworks asserts that the document is a
statement about what we know about teaching and learning of English language
arts. I invariably, inexorably, and inescapably begin to think of what we don't
know when I see these assertions about knowledge bases.

But, I must
say, when I look at some of the things we have ostensibly learned in the last
40 years, I am amazed at the courage, the risk-taking attitude, the raw
audacity to make such discipline-splitting statements as "learning is
dynamic" or "learning never ceases" (SCELAF, 1996, p.5).

There are,
however, several admirable and commendable aspects of these documents. In
theory, they really are ingratiating. In the South
Carolina document, the learning of language is organized
into four strands which are based on the purposes and uses of language. These
include: (1) using language to learn, (2) using the conventions and forms of
language, (3) using language to communicate, and (4) appreciating language.
These strands are then further developed by standards which, like the national
standards, outline what students must know and be able to do.For example, in the strand called using
language to learn, one standard states that students must synthesize
information from a variety of sources. Who could disagree with that? Another
strand is titled, "Appreciating Language." This standard states that
students are to demonstrate an understanding of the aesthetics of language.
Whoopee!

It is at this
point, however, that the wheels begin to come off of this idealistic and
futuristic paradigm that was to save those of us in the literacy business from
ourselves. So let us get to the pragmatic and pedagogical application of these
pedantic platitudes.

I hastily
turned to the vignettes after soaring high with the theoretical strands and
standards. I plowed head first into the mud with the very first model for
appreciating language.The standard
under appreciating language read: demonstrate an understanding of the
aesthetics of language. The first sentence in the vignette starts off well.
"The class is working in the school media center, conferring with each
other, their teacher, and the school media specialist" (SCELAF, p.35). Wow! This sounds like it is really going
to be on target. My mind raced ahead. I bet they will be reading IRA's Young
Adult Choices, the Newberry Award Winners, or IRA's Favorite Paperbacks. I
wanted to run into that media center and mention this year's Newberry winner, Out of the Dust (Hesse, 1997) and follow
that by telling these students they would love Shiloh (Naylor, 1992) and Missing
May (Rylant, 1992), too. They all involved plots about poor people
struggling in this class-conscious country. But, then my enthusiasm waned, and
I almost dropped the ponderous pounds of standards in my hands when I
incredulously read the next line. "All the students have selected a
particular word that interests them, and they are searching for uses of their
word that display the variety of its denotations and connotations"
(SCELAF, p.35). Not a Newberry winner,
not a paperback, not a favorite chapter in literature, but a single word. There
is no baptism here with life-lifting literature, no immersion, not even a
sprinkling. To extend the analogy, a damp cloth for baptism would have been an
improvement. Here, the focus is on a single word in the English vocabulary. At
this rate of one word a day, considering there are 185 school days in an
academic year, it will take 600,000 days, or 3,243 years to cover the English
lexicon as it now stands. And remember, the lexicon is continuously growing and
expanding.

This
fictitious, futuristic, far-sighted vignette goes on to describe Zach, a
basketball player, whose word was "game," not even a multisyllabic
word, not a rich form class word serving as an adjective, adverb, or
participle, but the word "game." This lofty paradigm for future
pedagogy goes on to say that Zach wrote his
response to this lesson as follows: "I found out that wild animals are
described as 'game' because they were hunted for sport.It makes sense, but I hadn't thought about
that before" (SCELAF, p.35). God
help us.

I turned to the
other vignette that went with the strand, appreciating language, and the
standard related to students demonstrating an understanding of the aesthetics
of language. Here, I anticipated a teacher who had chosen poignant passages
from Walk Two Moons by Creech (1994)
or Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
(1989), or A Day No Pigs Would Die
(Peck, 1973). I couldn't wait to see what writers the eighth grade teachers
would read, or whether the teachers themselves in the 21st century would
display their personal writing to really demonstrate their understanding of the
aesthetics of language.

But, alas, this
was not to be. Instead, each eighth grade student surprisingly was given a huge
bag filled with cotton, and the students were expected to clean seeds and trash
from the cotton. Oh, I thought. This is leading to Roll of Thunder. Hear My Cry, the best book ever written on racism
by that wonderful African-American writer Mildred Taylor (1976).What a wonderful idea. No, this was not to
be. Instead, as they picked the seeds and trash from the cotton, the teacher
shows overheads of cotton gins and "a discussion ensues about why this
invention was important to cotton farmers" (SCELAF, p.36). After the students have cleaned a fair
amount of cotton, they bring out notebooks and record questions, comments, or
thoughts they want to save.

Now,
this is a fine introduction to something, I guess, but where is the input
regarding an understanding of the aesthetics of language? The kids in the
vignette did not read a single word of life-lifting language from any author on
any subject in any genre. Where is the teacher after shuffling and dealing
overhead transparencies? "The teacher, meanwhile, is free to help
individual students [as they try to teach themselves] or to circulate among
peer groups as they confer" (SCELAF, p.36).

It is not all that hard to produce and
circulate babble nationally, regionally, or locally about literacy strands and
standards. But, it seems it is extremely difficult to translate these into
exemplary pragmatic, pedagogical models. Thus, the vignette was born into the
literacy literature.This was a way to
ostensibly ameliorate the effects of the standards movement, and yet provide a
beacon for those lost in the fog. The vignettes have instead revealed how
difficult it really seems to develop and practice the final step, classroom
application. May the writer offer a caveat? I would suggest that when in doubt
about what to put in a vignette, have children and youth read literature, and
then write until developing tendonitis. When in doubt about what teachers
should do in vignettes, how about instructing with declarative knowledge about
some reading strategies, and then throwing caution to the wind and actually
modeling the strategy for the students using fine pieces of literature? When in
doubt about teachers' or students' roles, both should simply read and write
while choosing from the plethora, constellations, or galaxies of good
literature at their disposal. We certainly could do worse as these official
documents so clearly demonstrate.

References

Creech, S.
(1994). Walk two moons. New York: Harper
Collins.

Hesse, K.
(1997). Out of the dust. New York: Scholastic
Press.

International
Reading Association & National Council of Teachers of English (1996). Standards for the English language arts.
Newark, DE: Author.

Alice Randlett’s To Market, To Market: Standards and
Controlling Metaphors

If
the public has to decide what the school’s mandate should be, surely citizens
also have to determine whether that mandate is carried out, whether they are
getting the results they want. That requires more than setting standards and
holding schools accountable. Unfortunately. . . our conventional ways of
defining success and measuring results can (and often do) undermine the
principal ingredient of success, namely, a strong sense of public
responsibility. (Mathews, 1996)

National
Standards vs. University Standards

Because
I am not strictly a teacher of teachers but rather a teacher of tutors who may
or may not become teachers, I decided to examine university standards,
realizing as I did so that there is no single source for such standards other
than the laws and regulations codified by the state of Wisconsin. And, in fact, these
are not standards in the strictly definitional form of “Exemplar(s) of measure
or weight.” I thought rather to interview some of my colleagues across the
university to determine where they believed standards originate and where one
might find them written.

Metaphor

Before
turning to my interviews with a university chancellor, social scientist and
scientist, I need to introduce the concepts of metaphor and controlling metaphor.
So that I might give coherence to the disparities between and among the
discourses of social science, science, and administration, I used Lakoff’s
(1992) general theory of metaphor as cross-domain mappings in the conceptual
system. Metaphors are central to ordinary natural language, not mere literary
constructs, and have cognitive reality. That is, we shape our conceptions of
the world through metaphor. Metaphor allows us to understand a relatively
abstract or inherently unstructured subject matter in terms of a more
accessible, or at least a more highly structured subject matter. Metaphor may
create realities for us, especially social realities. A metaphor may thus be a
guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will,
in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. In
this sense metaphors can be self-fulfilling prophecies.

A
controlling metaphor is one that impacts, controls, or unifies an entirety
(e.g., “The Journey,” as in “love is a journey,” “the hero’s journey,” “time as
journey.”). Susan Sontag, in her book, Illness
as Metaphor, provides a discussion of what she sees as the controlling
metaphors of capitalism in 19th and 20th century America when she writes:

Early
capitalism assumes the necessity of regulated spending, saving, accounting,
discipline—an economy that depends on the rational limitation of desire. TB is
described in images that sum up the negative behavior of 19th
century homo economicus: Consumption;
wasting; squandering of vitality. Advanced capitalism requires expansion,
speculation, the creation of new needs (the problem of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction); buying on credit; mobility—and an economy that depends on the
irrational indulgence of desire. Cancer is described in images that sum up the
negative behavior of 20th century homo economicus: abnormal growth, repression of energy, that is,
refusal to consume or spend. (1978, p.63)

It
seems to me that the logical next step in this progression of homo economicus into the 21st
century extends the requirements of advanced capitalism into a new being: homo Mercatus: Market Man. It must be
said that my interviews were not guided by this metaphor but rather the
metaphor developed out of my reading and rereading of the interviews. What
follows is a ragged reporting of my informants’ responses to my question: What
are university standards and how do we know when we meet them? The interviewees
included a university chancellor, a professor of biology, and a professor of sociology.
All have considerable histories in the University of Wisconsin System; that is, all are
veteran teachers in this mid-sized Midwestern university. All are male, which
may or may not have influenced their choice of metaphoric language, but I find
the same figures of speech in my own and female colleagues’ talk.

Chancellor

Chancellor
G. defined standards as assessment related to accountability and stated that
the regents of the state university system require accountability. The 1992 Report of the Governor’s Task Force on
University of Wisconsin Accountability Measures recommends that
accountability measures be publicized in an annual report or report card “in a
highly visible manner,” and that the system should also develop other
“mechanisms of communicating its performance to stockholders” (Italics mine). I was shocked by this blatantly
economic term until I learned that stockholders is spell-checkerese for
“stakeholders.” Either way, I see the notion of ownership in a marketable
commodity, in this case education, in these terms.

The
chancellor says that professional standards are not standard, that is, while
some departments must be certified, others do not need professional imprimatur.
For instance, NCATE is optional as is American Chemical Society certification.
As well, there can be dissonance between state agencies and professional
accrediting societies (e.g., NCATE and the Department of Public Instruction).

He
closed the interview by remarking that this university is moving to accept SAT
scores as well as ACT scores so that we don’t lose our market share of students who come from schools where only the SAT
is given (italics mine).

Scientist

Professor
B, a biologist, responded to my questions with a few of his own: “Who
interprets the standards?” and “Who benefits from them?” He thinks that
evaluation of faculty and students is based on classroom performance but the
performance differs, is measured differently, and is based on differing
expectations.He believes that we must
start with the idea of what makes a good human being and how, as humans, we are
minimally accountable. The intentional vagueness of the evaluation process
causes stress and consternation to both parties—evaluator and evaluee. For
example, he asked whether two scholarly publications in five years was enough?

Professor
B asked about who is applying the standards? In his mind, productivity for
scientists is measured differently from the social sciences and humanities
though all are treated as if they make the same widgets. He also sees a decline
in respect for college education. “Now it’s simply a thing to check-off on the
way to success. More students seem to say ‘Give me a product and I’ll move on
and eventually earn a degree.’”

He finds that textbooks
drive curriculum and provide a kind of fall-back, fact-based position for many
faculty as the ultimate—and easiest—reference. He stated that interpretation,
while higher level, is harder to evaluate. Also, unequal preparation during
K-12 may handicap minorities and low socioeconomic students. Unequal starting
preparation is particularly hard to address in the sciences despite the
extensive review in introductory classes.

There
is a market for underrepresented groups in faculties, too, he noted. “How can
we fix this if the pool of African-American mammalogists consists of three
people? The market operates here, too.” He closed by saying that having a PE
coach for a high school science teacher can be handicapping, too.

Social
Scientist

Professor
W finds that, unlike K-12, university faculty do not have a contract that
provides some standards for teachers. He sees that there are no real criteria
for grading and grade inflation seems to be a real phenomenon. “We’ve fallen
into the trap of associating self-concept with grades, as if we can actually
give anyone self-confidence. Effort—working very hard—is not enough for an A.”

He
stated that as we evaluate, it’s easy to provide effort, or how-many sorts of
data; it’s much harder to provide effect, or how-much, data. The hardest thing
to document is the connection between what we do and the outcomes of the
process. “Can we really say what we do causes the effect?”

“When
grade point is the only system for evaluating students, we’ll see a lot of
subversion of that system going on. We’ve found we need subjective evaluation,
too, and now we see the reinstitution of a sort of old boy network when it
comes to affirmative action. We have gone from a sponsor system for mobility to
a contest system and now we’re returning to the sponsor system.”

He
contrasted the low degree of consensus about what constitutes knowledge in the
social sciences against the high degree found in the sciences. As well, the
building block approach of science education is missing in the social sciences,
and this makes agreement about criteria for grading or standards difficult.

Market
Metaphors

While
my informants differ in their evaluation of evaluation, the consensual
definition of standards, there does arise some consistency in the metaphors
they use to describe their perceptions of the standards question. So, if we say
that two problems are alike (e.g., grade inflation, the highly competitive
market for minority mammalogists, the low productivity of sociologists, trim
the fat from university budgets, market share of students), then we are saying
that the solutions are also alike. That is, we can solve them by applying
solutions from the marketing literature. But the market metaphor fails unless
we find that customers of some institutions are always more satisfied, all their
employees more productive, and all their practices less wasteful than those of
public institutions.

If
we are marketers rather than stewards, who then are our customers? Students?
Parents? Taxpayers? Future employers? Conceiving of education as a market place
leaves out the possibility of political action and resistance on the part of
students and teachers. Disgruntled customers do not customarily write letters
to Congress or state legislators about poor service at K-Mart. Is not the view
of “student as wallet” an impoverished one, at best? And, in giving the
customer what she wants, do we give up any right to grades other than A’s?

As
teachers we have a political responsibility that a market metaphor obscures.
Our bureaucratic situations presuppose and imply a connection with others that
the market metaphor fails to convey. I hope never see blue light specials in
the humanities aisle.